When 3 join the 1
by p.psycho3
Summary: The Slayer, her sister and her best friend move in next door to the Haliwells.


When 3 join the 1.  
  
Please note that Buffy, Angel etc etc are made by Joss Whedon, and that Charmed is made by Constance M. Burge.  
  
Just so you know this is a parallel world where Buffy stayed in California instead of going to Rome after her destruction of the hell mouth in Sunnydale. Her original Scoobies stayed with her. Kennedy dumped Willow for some floozy in a café. She now spends her days going "ribbit!" on a lily pad. Giles is finding the rest of Willow's slayer army and trying to rebuild the Watcher's Council, accompanied by Andrew.  
  
Part 1  
  
Picture the scene. The sun shine bathing California in a warm fuzzy glow. The traffic is buzzing around San Francisco, and the sound of children playing (just be glad you can't hear what they're saying.) Buffy and Willow have started moving in, and their nosey neighbours are twitching Here is what they see.  
  
"Does my ass look big in this?"  
  
"For the last time, NO!! Buffy, will you stop worrying about how you look."  
  
"Dawn! I need money! Money buys food. Food lets you concentrate at school. You get a good job. You buy me food. I die old and happy. So I ask again. Does my ass look big in this?"  
  
"WILLOW, COME HERE AND LOOK AT BUFFY'S ASS A SEC!!!"  
  
"Dawn!!"  
  
"Well, that's somethin' a girl doesn't hear every day! Yep. A small, nice, Buffyesque ass. Why Buffy, what's up."  
  
"She's worrying about her job interview."  
  
"Dawn!!"  
  
"Oh, Buff, even if you don't get it, you know that Anya when she died left Xander loads of stuff. Y'know, she lived a thousand years, she was pretty well off. Xander will help if the worst happens."  
  
"Yeah I guess, but Will, I don't want to live off Xander. I want to live off Buffy."  
  
Now lets look at the nosey neighbours on the other side of the house. What have we here. Three witches. Sisters. They are in fact the charmed ones. Three of the most powerful girls in the world. What are they up to...  
  
"Piper, hurry up, we have new neighbours. Come. Greet."  
  
"Paige! I'm only gonna be a minute! Stop bugging me! Where's Phoebe?"  
  
"Here, just getting ready. Wait, wait. Ok. I'm ready."  
  
Buffy, was just getting ready to leave the house when, she tripped over something. "Dawn, will you pick your sneakers after you've finished with them!! Look, I've spilt coffee down my jacket, and I don't have time to change. I'm gonna be Coffee Stain Buffy for this interview."  
  
As soon as she said this, Willow came down the stairs. She took one look, smiled and waved her hand the stain disappeared. "There ya go, have fun at work now."  
  
"PIPER, PIPER!!!"  
  
"I'm coming, I'm coming."  
  
"No you're not! The red haired one is a Witch."  
  
"So are we, what's your point Paige?"  
  
"Piper, normally if something magical happens, it's here to kill us. You want to just go wandering up to it with a house warming gift. 'Here ya go, three Charmed Ones with a side order of fries!' Yeah that's really gonna work."  
  
"Ok, first, evil hardly ever moves in next door, secondly you are way too paranoid. Still if you're still scared lets just do a little Scrying. If they are powerful, that will pick it up. Okay Paige. PHOEBE, COME HERE A SECOND!"  
  
About an hour later, the spell had been done.  
  
"Oh boy."  
  
"Yep."  
  
"Oh boy."  
  
"Yes Phoebe, Oh boy. What are we gonna do? Piper, any ideas?"  
  
"I'm picking up some major bad karma there," said Phoebe, "I got a strange sense of flaying from that house, not to mention a whole lot of axes and chopping. It was really dark in there. I also picked up a lot of innocent death. And blood. A fridge full of blood."  
  
Meanwhile, whilst Willow surfs the net looking for a few ingredients, you know the usual, wing of bat, eye of newt et cetera.  
  
She feels a pressure, and then she sees three girls, sitting and performing a locator spell. They are looking for her. Then the pressure is gone. She recognises one of them as the next door neighbour. She is pleased that She is alone, because she felt their power, and she was glad that Dawn was at school.  
  
"Right so we're clear. Phoebe, you go to the front door, and cause the initial distraction, Paige, you then orb in behind the red head with me, and I'll freeze her. Are we clear?"  
  
"Yep." Said Paige  
  
"As mud. Why do I have to be the decoy?"  
  
"Because Paige can get us in behind her quickly."  
  
They went out the front door, and then, Paige and Piper orbed to the back of the Summers residence. Phoebe rang the doorbell. The red head answered. "Hi, I'm Phoebe, your neighbour."  
  
"Willow. Pleased to meet you." Said Willow, and she thought "They don't know that I know about them. I have an edge. Yay for me."  
  
She saw Phoebe glance over her own shoulder. She spun around to see two girls standing there. One with dark hair, and one with Red. The dark haired one flexed her fingers at Willow. Willows protection spell illuminated around her. "Did you really think that I didn't know you were coming? Well if you want to fight, come on. Do your worst."  
  
Phoebe came as quite a surprise. She had levitated and drop kicked Willow into the wall, and knocking the lamp over. When Willow looked up, her eyes had a black oily sheen to them, and her hair had darkened slightly. Not black, but a blood red. "Ok, now I'm pissed."  
  
She send a bolt of dark energy flying toward Phoebe, as she was the one who kicked her.  
  
"ENERGY BALL!" Willow saw her magic dissolve and reappear in the hand of the one they called Paige, who then threw Willow's own magic back at her. With a wave of her hand Willow dissolved the ball.  
  
"Nice try." she said. With that Willow let rip with a continuous stream of magic. This time at Paige. Paige orbed to the left and let Willows attack pass. Piper tried to blow Willow up, but again Willow's spell managed to block it. Willows spell it should be noted blocks area attacks, but anything physical (including direct energy blasts) remain unaffected. Willow then launched her homing fireball at Piper, with her trademark "Fly my pretty fly!!"  
  
Piper froze the ball in mid air. Willow raised an eye brow and muttered a few syllables. With that, she created an expanding ring of magic, with her at the centre. Paige orbed inside the ring, to pummel Willow, and was blasted out of the circle by the stored magic.  
  
Meanwhile, Willow's homing fireball unfroze, and started creating chaos for the Charmed Ones. Paige tried "FIREBALL," but this just pulled it towards her faster. Phoebe just had to be content with jumping out of the way, but she seemed all too aware that she was running out of room to dodge. Willow was keeping Piper busy, and so she couldn't freeze the fireball, as she was having to take out the projectiles aimed at her.  
  
She didn't notice the fireball until too late. It sent her flying across the room. Paige used some quick thinking and sent a sofa to get in the way of Piper's fall. Willow recognised that she couldn't win. But neither could they.  
  
She muttered a few syllables, and she disappeared in a cloud of black lightning. Phoebe got up, having landed on a somewhat unstable table, and rushed over to her sisters. "Well, it could have been worse." She said in a surprisingly happy tone.  
  
"Oh really, how?" snapped Piper. She'd landed awkwardly on the sofa, and had a sore shoulder. She suspected that she'd pulled something, and wasn't in the mood to be joked at.  
  
"Yep. It could have been our furniture." She said with a grin.  
  
"Ok, let's discuss this at home." Said Paige, and with that she orbed them back to their own home.  
  
Willow reappeared, red haired and green eyed. She took a look at the chaos that the battle had caused, and she clicked her fingers. Everything flew back to where it should be. "Good, now Buffy won't rip me apart." Dawn came in from school. She looked proud of herself. "Ok, what'd you do?" Asked Willow.  
  
"Oh some guy called Brad thought it would be fun to pick on a friend of mine. I pinned him to the floor, and twisted his arm up his back and held him there until he begged for mercy. He looked so embarrassed. I couldn't stop laughing." She grinned at the memory.  
  
"Dawn, Buffy didn't teach you those tricks so that you could beat up the boys a school."  
  
"She's never complained before."  
  
"Well, I do now." Buffy entered the room looking distinctly put out. "If I have to go up to this school and apologise to another boy's mother because my sister beat him up, I'm going to hang you up by your ears. Do I make myself perfectly clear?" The tone made it perfectly clear that not understanding was not an option. "Now go do you homework."  
  
Once Dawn had stormed up stairs, Buffy turned to Willow. "Ok, you haven't looked me in the eye since I came home, what's up."  
  
"I was paid a visit by three Witches today. They attacked me. I couldn't beat them, but luckily, they couldn't keep me down either. I managed to dissolve out of their way until they left the house."  
  
Buffy looked thoughtful, and then asked, "How did you know they were Witches?"  
  
"I felt them looking for me. And I saw them. It was almost as if I managed to look back down the conduit. I saw their faces, and so when they, or at least the youngest one arrived, I knew that trouble was on the cards. I'm just glad that I managed to get a protection spell done before they got here. That blocked their first assault. It felt like a spell to mess up time some how. When one of them kicked me down, I lost some of my control. I felt the urge. The worst thing is, the source of the spell was close. Really close. I'm talking same street here. Maybe you should patrol tonight."  
  
"Well duh! When my best friend is attacked, I'm really just going to sit here. Whilst I'm still here, maybe you should set up a few magical traps. You know nothing fatal, but maybe just enough to stop them leaving. We can send Dawn out with Xander for the evening. Any idea where he's staying?"  
  
"Yeah. It's right near the Buckland Auction house. It's far enough to stop them being at risk."  
  
"Right. We have a plan. Call Xander, get him too pick up Dawn. I'll go patrol. Right after your finished. Go brew. Cackle. Enjoy."  
  
"Leo! LEO! Get your white lighter ass down here! LEO!"  
  
"Jeez, Piper, will you quit yelling. Leo will come when he can. Go, have a bath or something. Just do it quietly." Phoebe had had enough of her sister yelling pretty much continuously since they had orbed back. Piper seemed to have taken Willow's apparent immunity to her powers as a personal insult. Paige on the other hand seemed to think that the whole thing would sort itself out, and was calmly browsing through the Book of Shadows.  
  
"Hey, Paige, do we know anything about the blonde girl living with her. Is she a witch too?"  
  
"I don't know. It would make sense. But we haven't seen her do any magic. Does she know what we look like?"  
  
"No, Paige, I don't think so. Why?" asked Piper. She was waiting for her bath to run.  
  
"Well, there is this potion I just found for detecting Witches. You spill it on the witch in question, and if it turns blue, you got yourself a witch. If they're a neutral, then there's no reaction." Recently Paige had her nose stuck in the book of Shadows more than the rest had for a long time.  
  
"Well, it seems like we have a plan," said Piper. "We wait 'til she leaves the house, and we throw the potion on her. Oh, where the hell is Leo, he needs to pick up Wyatt for me. We have a date, We, that is us three, need help with this witch, and, and I left the bath running!!"  
  
As Piper scurried off up stairs to get in the bath, a white glow appeared in the room. Leo materialised in front of the two witches. "Hey lover boy, too late, she's in the bath. Your gonna have to wait." Joked Phoebe. "Hey Wyatt, hey there. Hello. Hello. Who's a good boy. You are. Yes you are..."  
  
Phoebe descended into waves of baby talk to Wyatt, whilst Paige explained what had happened to Leo. "You were lucky not to take more damage than you did. That witch is incredibly powerful. She was never assigned a white lighter, as she seemed to be doing fine without one. About two years ago she got hooked on the magics. She seemed to get over them, and was doing fine, but the Elders thought she needed watching. Then the worst happened. In an attempt to kill her friend, the one who lives next door, a thug shot Willow's girlfriend. With her partner dead, Willow sailed over the edge. She underwent a tragic transformation. You saw a scaled down version of these effects today, but she has greater control now. Now you must remember her power was fuelled by grief, and that she was not herself. She went on a mission to kill the three involved in her partner's murder. She caught the first one, and flayed him alive. She went to a local magic shop and drained all of the knowledge from almost every book in there. With this new charge, she went to finish her crusade, but a friend of hers tried to stop her, using magic. He couldn't match her power, but he did manage to unlock her emotions and allow her to confront her grief. Due to the huge power she had, it linked her to all the pain and sorrow in the world. In a frenzied state, she resurrected a temple dedicated to a hell demon, and she tried to destroy the world by focusing all of the Earth's power into it. Her best friend since kinder garden managed to stop her. Without him she would have destroyed the planet. She has that sort of power. She is no longer evil, it was brief, and formed from pain. She is good now. You should know this, because if she had wanted to kill you. You would probably be dead. You can not hope to match her."  
  
Leo looked grim. It was obvious that he felt sorry for her. Both Paige and Phoebe looked quite guilty. "That explains the feelings and images I got when we made contact during the scrying." Said Phoebe quietly.  
  
Paige on the other hand looked thoughtful. "What do we know of her friend, the one who lives with her?"  
  
"Not much. We, the elders know that she is powerful, but much of it is hidden from us. She has a power of some sort, but she isn't a Witch. All we know is that about an hour before Sunnydale was swallowed up by that large magical disturbance, the power was replicated and distributed around the world. Willow was involved, and it shows her power again as no one else has ever managed this."  
  
"Maybe we should go and apologise to them?" asked Phoebe.  
  
"I'd wait until tomorrow. If you go round in the dark, you may get the wrong response." Advised Leo.  
  
When Piper came down, she had spoken to Leo. He had had to cancel the date, and told her that her sisters had a lot to tell her. When she had heard the whole story, she seemed less worried about not being able to freeze Willow. This may have been because she now knew that Willow was one of the most powerful beings on the planet.  
  
The next morning, The Charmed Ones walked round to the Summers residence, this time, all of them using the front door. As soon as they entered the thresh hold of the house, a piecing shriek was emitted. All three of them jumped, and Pipers reflex action was to freeze the area to cut off the noise. It worked. Willow appeared at the door, in her customary cloud of lightning. She had normal eyes and red hair again. She looked mildly annoyed. "Look, if you want another fight, fine, but can we get it over with? I have a busy day!"  
  
Piper unfroze the sound barrier. Willow shut it down with a wave of her hand, and launched another ball with the other. Paige redirected it skyward. "Look, we just want to talk!" shouted Phoebe. Willow stood perfectly still. She seemed to be thinking about what her next plan ought to be. After about a minute she came to a decision.  
  
"Ok. Shoot. Say what you gotta say. After that, well, we'll see." At this moment Buffy rounded the garden gate, spotted the three Witches. They matched Willows description. Without asking she ran, and went straight into a drop kick.  
  
"NO! Buffy wait!" shouted Will, but it was too late. Buffy was about an inch from Phoebe's head when she froze in mid air. Willow looked at Piper, who gave her a look as if to say "What would you have done?" When Phoebe was safely out of the way, Buffy was unfrozen. She soared straight into the hedge.  
  
"What the... Ok, so you're witches. Well, I got news for ya," said Buffy in her usual chirpy tone, "I eat witches for breakfast! Prepare for a butt kicking."  
  
Willow ran down the steps and grabbed Buffy's arm in an attempt to stop her. Buffy not realising that it was Willow, The Slayer spun around and kicked Willow flying. Willow hit the wall, and fell to the floor, unconscious. Willow had never used magic against Buffy (Except for the rather unfortunate instance mentioned above, but what the hey, that wasn't really herself.), and it wasn't a habit she intended to get into. Consequently Buffy had managed to land the kick.  
  
Buffy looked around, saw Willow on the floor and realised what she had done. "WILLOW!" she cried and she ran to the unconscious form of her best friend. 


End file.
